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Brian Provost

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VP, Audience Development, Define Media Group

1587 points

Former Vice President of Audience Development for Focus.com. Now I run Audience Development for the web's largest publishers at Define Media Group.

Since 2002, I have been a leading Search, Online Publishing, Social Media, and Complex Internet Marketing advisor to big brands and the investment community.

WEB: Define Media Group

Brian Provost recommends this answer by Todd Mintz

Nov. 25, 2011

SEO Best Practices: What are 3 best practices for optimizing a landing page for organic traffic?

1) Clear and clean conversion paths. The goal of the landing page is to convert every visitor into a qualified lead (I'm making the assumption we're dealing in the B to B market). People shouldn't have to think to much when they hit your page...their ... more

Brian Provost and 7 other people answered this question

Nov. 18, 2011

What is the general view on an appropriate cost per month to outsource SEO for a small business?

Good SEO help can be expensive, mostly because the opportunity cost is substantial to a talented SEO who could build their own sites. Our average engagements are in the six figures per year. So, while it's a big number to digest, the top SEO firms ... more

Online Marketing

Search Engine Optimization

Brian Provost answered this question

Oct. 18, 2011

Which self service ad platforms are easiest to use?

For all of Google's Draconian ways, Adwords is still the gold standard, IMO. It is just an exceptional product and the lowest common denominator of human inputs has used it by the tens of millions for years. Very few platforms can say that, especially in ... more

Brian Provost and 1 other person answered this question

June 30, 2011

How much, if at all, does Facebook impact Google rankings?

The short answer is, "None of us know". The addendum to that answer is, "Whatever's going on, it probably changes every day. Or several times a day."
While there is high correlation between Facebook shares and top search results in the SEOMoz Ranking Factors report, correlation ... more

Search Engine Optimization

Jay Mandel selected a best answer for

Feb. 23, 2011

Can corporate/company digital employees prevent "black hat" search tactics from happening?

JC Penney fired their search agency SearchDex, for using "Black Hat" search tactics as noted in http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html. I am a corporate digital employee and have worked with several search firms in the the past. I can tell you with confidence that what happened at JCP ... more

Brian Provost and 3 other people answered this question

Feb. 18, 2011

What are your thoughts on BrightEdge?

Staying away from "black hat" seo firms is a guarantee you won't get shady links. As I've said before, I can go get 100,000 xrumer links from really bad places to your site in about 48 hours. In the really competitive markets, everything goes and ... more

Brian Provost recommends this answer by Paul Ogle

Feb. 11, 2011

Long tail content: which sites create high quality, long tail content at scale?

Wikipedia is the best horizontal example of this. While it's not pure content, Amazon is also a high quality source of content in the form of reviews. Some of the more interesting examples of high quality, long tail content are actually topic specific sites. Examples ... more

Brian Provost recommends this answer by Dan Snyder

Feb. 11, 2011

How did Twitter increase its valuation from $3.8b to $8b in two months!?

They released information that said they made $50 million in 2010 and were on track for $150 million in 2011. I guess the rough tripling of revenue led to a tripling of valuation.
Not that I'm saying they're worth their valuation, just that I think that's ... more

Brian Provost recommends this answer by Andrew Vashro

Feb. 7, 2011

MacBook Air or MacBook Pro?

Brian -
I agree with Cam on 13'' being plenty for daily work. They new Macs have good enough resolution to optimize your real estate.
However, I went with the Air over the Pro. I was certainly on the fence (smaller hard drive, bit less ... more

Brian Provost recommends this answer by Jeff Molander

Feb. 7, 2011

Are most Groupon merchants losing money?

Yes, according to new research most are losing money. I'll present the reasoning below (a summary of the research) and 4 tips -- how to run a profitable Groupon promotion.
Are Groupon promotions profitable for stores? Do they generate sufficient additional sales to Grouponers at full ... more

Brian Provost and 2 other people answered this question

Feb. 5, 2011

What are the options to manage Search Engine Marketing if its scope outgrows Adwords interface?

It depends on your budget. If you have a monthly spend above a certain point, there are high-powered services that become cost effective. I would take a look at Marin Software http://www.marinsoftware.com . The Marin app brings some serious processing power to the table and ... more

Paid Search Advertising

Search Engine Optimzation

Brian Provost and 2 other people answered this question

Feb. 4, 2011

Why does Quora block smaller / startup search engines?

They used to block everything but Google. My guess is that they are stretched pretty thin on technical resources and they don't need the site bogged down by every crawler in the world (not that most crawlers even acknowledge robots.txt, but tha'ts another story). more

Information Technology

Search Engine Optimization

Brian Provost and 3 other people answered this question

Feb. 4, 2011

How big of a factor does social validation play in SEO today? How should we expect this to evolve in SEO strategies?

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-do-tweets-influence-search-rankings-an-experim...

Search Algorithm

Search Engine Marketing

Brian Provost and 1 other person answered this question

Feb. 4, 2011

SEO: merge of 3 different sites into one will result in loss of organic traffic, but how much? 100%?

Every domain migration is unique due to unique signals and profiles of each domain, but it's a relatively trivial process as far as the engines are concerned. I've seen pixel perfect migrations on sites with millions of URL's go seemlessly and I've seen 5 page ... more

Brian Provost and 4 other people answered this question

Feb. 4, 2011

Does it bother you that Bing was copying Google's search results?

I'm equally impressed and annoyed with Google's grandstanding on this. Savvy PR, but they do it, too.
A few years ago, Google search was stale. Bing has been lighting a fire underneath them with a ton of product improvements recently and Google has had to ... more

Information Technology

Brian Provost recommends this answer by Chris Lloyd

Feb. 1, 2011

Which active athlete would you use to endorse your brand?

Good but boring - Phil Mickelson
Good but not an elite player - Andy Roddick
Good but on the downside of his career - Derek Jeter
Perfect for alternative brands - Brian Wilson and Tim Lincecum
Destroyed by taking their talents to South Beach - Lebron and Dwayne ... more

Brian Provost asked a question

Jan. 27, 2011

How Does Google Address "Content Farms" Without Crippling Their Adsense Revenues

Brian Provost recommends this answer by Rebecca Gill

Jan. 27, 2011

Where can you find a good SEO specialist?

Wow so many answers and yet it doesn't seem that anyone is pushing the good old fashion referral. All of my SEO clients have come through knowing my work online or via referrals. One client refers me to four clients who also refer me. I ... more

SEO Credentials

Brian Provost and 1 other person answered this question

Jan. 27, 2011

How will Google's upcoming algorithm changes targeting content farms impact Demand Media?

Depends on how Google wants to solve the problem. Demand probably has the biggest bullseye on its back in terms of public perception, but they are just a symptom of a much broader debate. Google has, IMO, 3 ways to go about doing this:
1. Turn ... more

Brian Provost and 4 other people answered this question

Jan. 25, 2011

What's the best all-time Super Bowl ad?

Two words for you:
Ali
Landry

Brian Provost recommends this answer by Dustin Thompson

Jan. 24, 2011

How is the increase in paid search ads going to impact the overall SEM environment?

First I believe that paid search marketers will need to improve their strategies and execution of paid search. Marketers will need to ensure that campaigns are as optimized as possible to reduce their CPC's to the lowest possible level. On the other hand marketers will ... more

Online Marketing

Paid Search Advertising

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Jan. 24, 2011

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